Volleyball Toolbox

3 v 3 All-Touch Transition & Attack

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This post was provided by Coaching Volleyball

By John Forman
Coach Forman is currently the assistant volleyball coach at Midwestern State University. Before that he was the Head Coach of the professional women’s team at Svedala Volleybollklubb in Sweden.

Here is a good game-play exercise that gets every player lots of touches and works especially on transition hitting.

Age/Skill Level: This is a drill for intermediate and higher levels.

Requirements: 6+ players, a ball, a net, extra antennae

Execution: Attach the spare antennae to the net to create a channel for attacking in Zones 2 and 4 (similar to what’s discussed here). Place three players to a side, with one at the next in Zone 2 (opponent’s Zone 4), one as the OH, and one as back court defender. One side starts the attack with a set to 4. The opposing player at the net blocks line, so the two others defend the angle. If the back court player digs the ball, the blocker sets the OH in Zone 4. If the OH digs the ball, the back court player sets the blocker in Zone 2, in which case the OH hitter on the other side blocks and the other two play defense. In this case the pattern is same in that if the front court player digs the ball, the back court defender sets the blocker, otherwise the blocker sets the OH. In other words, every player touches the ball each play. Continue until the ball goes dead, then the players rotate.

Variations:

This can be done cooperatively to encourage longer rallies.
The antennae can be adjusted to alter what the hitters have available to swing at around the block.
Additional Comments:

This drill is from England Junior National team coach Bertrand Olie and was posted as part of an interview with him on the Volleyball England website.
As a cooperative drill this could be used as a warm-up.


Shadow Drill

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Here is a great drill to help teach your players how and where to move depending on the type of block.

In the clip below Nebraska Coach John Cook, instructs his team during a live practice. The drill he is teaching is the Shadow Drill. In this drill players are required to get to base position, transition and execute four different blocks: Block Left, Block Right, Pipe and 3-up.

This drill is just one of many drills that Coach Cook shares in his All Access Nebraska Volleyball Practice with John Cook DVD. In the DVD you will see 5 full length live practice. Not only do you see his various drills, but you get a chance to see how he instructs and communicates with his players. For more information about that DVD, simply click the link above.

The YouTube video below has sound, so please make sure that your volume is turned up and that you have access to the site. Note that some schools block access to YouTube.


One Hour Practice Plan

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This post was provided by Coaching Volleyball

By John Forman

Coach Forman is the assistant volleyball coach at Midwestern State University. Before that he was the Head Coach of the professional women’s team at Svedala Volleybollklubb in Sweden

One Spring day at MSU we had the last of the off-season practice sessions with the team before they went on Spring Break. After the break we were shifting into the non-traditional season (Spring Training). Those with an NCAA background know we could only do 2 hours of on-court work in the off season. All the players had done an hour already earlier in the week – either individually or in small groups. This session, though, featured everyone. As I had recently found out, that was allowed in Division II. It wasn’t in Division I when I coached that level.

Since we only had two practices before our first Spring tournament, the head coach wanted to give the players a chance to go 6 v 6 for the first time in a long while. We therefore decided to devote 30 minutes to that. The first 30 minutes was build up to it.

Here’s one of the tricks of maximizing your time with the players in this kind of situation. Get them to warm-up on their own before you get into the gym. That way you can go right to work. By the time we got there, the players were already into playing back row Winners 3s.

Activity #1
We had 12 players with just one court set up. The first thing we did was to have them play 3 v 3 on a narrow court. In other words, we had two games going on next to each other. We grouped the players by position, then did a count-off to decide their teams. We ran two rounds of play, with winners playing winners and losers playing losers for the second one. If I’m remembering correctly, it was a back row attack only game. The games went to 8.

Activity #2
The second activity is something I did at times with my Svedala team. I developed it as a kind of a Belly Drill or Speedball variation in teams of 4 (counted off as above). Two teams were on the court with one off waiting to come on. The teams on played out a 4 v 4 rally (all hitting options available). At its conclusion, the waiting team replaced the losers while a coach initiated a ball to the winners (down ball over the net).

This is a fast-paced game. The players don’t get much down time. We played for 15 minutes and the teams kept track of rally wins. I think it was something like 27, 25, and 20. So we got in at least as many points as you’d get in 1.5 sets in less time than it generally takes to play a single one. This is more rallies we would have seen in Winners 4s, with the inherent delay of teams waving through to the winners’ side.

Activity #3
The last half of the session was simple game play. We divided the players by position. That created some imbalances and caused some funky rotational requirements. One of the assistants jumped in to balance out the hitting, while a pair of defenders split time playing back row for one team. They got into a second set before the hour was up and decided to keep going after we left.

Skill coverage
Let’s think about how much we included of the various skills in this short session.

The 3 v 3 game and the 6 v 6 both included serving, though in the latter case not everyone ended up doing it because of the team compositions (some players front-row-only).
Serve reception was part of both the 3 v 3 and 6 v 6.
All of the games included setting, though it was only in 6 v 6 where the setters specifically took all the second balls. In the other games sometimes they did, but often times it was other players.
Hitting was included in all three games from a variety of locations.
Blocking was included in all three games, though only in the 6 v 6 was their regular double blocking.
Defense was included in all three games, with the 4 v 4 essentially starting each rally with a defense ball (down ball from the other side of the net).
So you could say the balance was skewed toward the “open play” type of skills – setting, hitting, blocking, defense – with a bit less in serving and passing. We could have boosted the serve reception by having the assistants serve a ball to start the next rally in the 4 v 4 game.


Digging Drill

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Here is a great digging drill for getting your players multiple repetitions diving to dig a ball. This drill allows for every player to get multiple reps in a very short period of time

In the video clip below you will get a look at a live practice drill from Dan Fisher,University of Pittsburgh Head Coach;2017 ACC Coach of the Year;2017 ACC Champions; former Concordia -Irvine University Head Coach,2012 NAIA National Championship (perfect 38-0 record), National Runner-Up finish in 2011;NAIA/AVCA National Coach of the Year (2011).

In the video Coach Fisher is conducting a fundamental digging drill. The clip is taken from a live University of Pittsburg practice.

This digging drill is just one of many contained in Coach Fisher’s coaching DVD. For more information about that DVD click the link All Access Volleyball Practice with Dan Fisher

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that the volume is turned up and that you have access to the site. Note that some schools block access to YouTube. Click the arrow to play the video


Volleyball Agility Drills

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Agility is important in every sport and volleyball is not any different. The ability of your players to quickly change directions while maintaining their balance will allow them to be more effective on the court. Here are 10 Volleyball Agility Drills that you can incorporate into your daily practices and/or your offseason training program.

In th clip below Keyatta May, head coach at Coppin State, shares 1o different volleyball agility drills that she uses with her teams. Each drill has multiple variations that require the athlete to execute a wide variety of movement patterns. All of the volleyball agility drills can be executed with very simple equipment like cones, mini-hurdles and poly spots making them easy to set up and take down.

These are simple yet effective drills that could easily be incorporated into the first 10-15 minutes of a practice session. They could  simply become part of your daily pre-practice warm-up routine. While you certainly would not want to do all of the exercises and their varitations each practice,  you could simply pick a 2-3 different drills  to do each day.  Taking 10-15 minutes each day to do agility work will pay big dividends. Despite spending just a few minutes each day you will see improvement in the movement of your athletes. The better they move, the better they will be at executing their volleyball skills.

The clip is just a small portion of Coach May’s presentation on Volleyball Specific Agility Drills at a recent Glazier Volleyball Clinic. For information about how to gain access to her entire presentations, as well as hundreds of other great clinic presentations, just click the link Glazier Volleyball Clinics. 

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your volume is turned up and that you have access to the site. Note that some schools block access to Youtube. If you are having trouble viewing at school, please contact your network administrator.